1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to moving objects between user environments in data processing systems and in particular to copying or moving objects in the user interface of one user environment to another user environment in a data processing system. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to copying or moving an object from one user environment to another user environment while retaining its original properties or settings and being augmented by additional behaviors, properties, and settings in the new user environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Frequently, modern operating systems in data processing systems are capable of supporting more than one type of user environment. As a result, user applications are being written to operate in any user environment. One manner by which user applications are being created which can operate in any user environment is by implementing the applications as software objects using and open document interchange and display architecture.
Open document interchange and display architectures are useful in a variety of user applications such as word processors and spread sheets. Contemporary open document architectures support compound documents, which can be constructed to simultaneously contain text, video images, sound objects, mathematical calculations, etc. One example of a contemporary open document architecture is the "OpenDoc" architecture, described in IBM OpenDoc OS/2 Programming Guide, Copyright 1994, 1995 IBM Corporation.
The OpenDoc architecture is supported by the OS/2 operating system, a product of International Business Machines Corporation located in Armonk, N.Y., which provides a graphical user interface called the Workplace Shell. Both OpenDoc and the Workplace Shell are based on the System Object Model (SOM), a technology designed to avoid language dependence in Object Oriented Programming (OOP). SOM is a language-independent, object-oriented technology for building, packaging, and manipulating binary class libraries. The SOM runtime environment, in which Workplace Shell objects operate, is currently available in the OS/2 and AIX operating systems, both products of International Business Machines Corporation located in Armonk, N.Y., and as a separate add-on to the Windows operating system. SOM objects created for one user environment may be easily ported to another SOM-based user environment.
In an operating system that supports multiple types of user environments (or type shells), it would be desirable to copy or move an object from the user interface of one user environment to another user environment, retain the objects original properties and settings, and augment the object with additional behaviors, properties, and settings for the new user environment.